The officer is not inside your industry
One mistake I had to watch for in my EB-1A petition was writing like the reader already understood my world. They did not.
Topic
Immigration
A collection of 19 issues
The recommendation letters that helped me were specific, not glowing
When I first thought about EB-1A recommendation letters, I assumed the goal was praise. Strong praise.
Do not make the officer guess where a document came from
One of the quietest ways to weaken evidence is to strip it of its source. A screenshot with no URL is harder to trust.
Final merits is a closing argument, not a recap
By the time I reached the final merits section of my EB-1A petition, I was tired. The criteria sections had already done a lot of work.
Your resume explains chronology. Your petition explains eligibility.
A resume asks: What did you do, and when?
My exhibit list got better when I stopped treating it like storage
My final EB-1A petition had 40 exhibits. That number only tells half the story.
Prestige is context. Responsibility is proof.
A famous venue is not proof. A famous company is not proof.
The first thing my EB-1A had to explain was my field
Before my EB-1A petition could explain why I was extraordinary, it had to explain what field I was extraordinary in. That sounds obvious. It was not obvious to me at the start.
The 13-year timeline I drew before I wrote a word of my final merits section
Before I wrote my final merits section, I drew a timeline.
Not in a fancy tool. A list, in a Google Doc, by year, from 2011 to 2024.
For each year, one line for every concrete thing on record: a press piece, a launched program, a judging invitation, an award,
I had Forbes coverage from 12 years ago. Here's how I used it as EB-1A evidence.
In December 2011, Forbes ran an article called "Can't meet Eric Schmidt in Paris at LeWeb'11!? No Worries." It covered an event I had organized called the LeWeb Student Warm-up, held just before the main LeWeb conference in Paris. I was 22.
Seven months